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Guiding Principles for Moderation
The following principles codify the basic philosophy of how MCC moderation should operate. All moderators are expected to adhere to their spirit at all times if possible. Moderation harms as well as helps In an ideal world, there would be no need for moderators. We would not have to censor posts, or take privileges away from members for their infractions. Everyone would be, if not completely polite and helpful, at least polite and helpful enough. Troublemakers would be reformed by peer pressure, and people would mostly get along by themselves. Staff would exist only to make sure the site kept running, and would threaten action against a member under only the most extraordinary circumstances. There are certainly some online communities that can operate along these lines, but MCC is not one of them. Our membership is composed mostly of adolescent males looking for recreation, and that is not a demographic that tends to behave well if left to its own devices. Without swift and sure action to address flaming and spam, the atmosphere of the site would quickly become outright poisonous. Useful posts would be swamped in mounds of irrelevant garbage, and all members would be subject to withering scorn and vitriol for pretty much anything someone else takes issue with. Only the thickest-skinned would stay for long, and eventually they would give up as well, bereft of targets. The site would die. It would be nice if this were a paranoid fantasy concocted by authoritarian admins to justify their own importance, but experience shows it's nothing but the truth for gaming websites. So, we have moderators. We keep people from getting too far out of line, because it's necessary. And certainly, moderators do valuable and important work, and should be respected for that. But we should always remember that all moderation has negative repercussions. Our goal is to help members, not to punish them. Every time we deprive a member of a privilege that made him happy, destroy a post he worked hard to create, or change his words to something he didn't say, we hurt the purpose of MCC: to let people collaborate and enjoy participating in our community. Yes, moderation is necessary and provides many benefits, but moderators should never forget to consider the harm that their actions can cause as well. Prevent if possible, deter if necessary, and avenge never The ideal of moderation is to prevent the ToS from being violated in the first place. If we can somehow guide members into following the rules to begin with, whether through explicit request or unconscious direction or simple technical mandate, that's the best of all possible worlds. It's rare that a technical fix works well to enforce the rules. We do it for the profanity censor and some signature/avatar size limits, but not much else. A more generally applicable but less effective type of prevention is to discourage bad behavior by setting a good example. We can also try to make interested members aware of the rules, by posting public explanations when we take action and by being available to explain things in the case of doubt. But some people will still break the rules, knowingly or unknowingly. When this happens, we should still try prevention for the future. We shouldn't lay down the iron glove of law if we can avoid it. For instance, if it's practical, we could explain the problem to the member and suggest that they edit their own post. A member who's asked nicely and complies willingly is much better for us than a member who had his post edited and was told about it only afterward. The first will feel like a responsible adult who made a mistake and rectified it. The second will inevitably feel attacked, even if just a little. It's not usually practical to ask rather than taking action directly, but this kind of alternative should always be kept in mind. Some people there's just no stopping, though. Some members won't listen to polite advice, either because they don't agree with it or because they have difficulty restraining themselves. Then, and only then, do we need to resort to more heavy-handed tactics. We need to figure out a way to coerce the member into behaving once all other options have been exhausted (but not before). In practice, we resort to threats. Someone who's signed up to the site evidently wants to post here. We can threaten to make posting here less attractive. And to make our threats credible, we have to carry them out eventually. There's just no other way to stop people from breaking the rules. We don't punish members because they're bad, or because they deserve it. We punish members because every other option for ensuring the site's health has been exhausted. Our primary focus always needs to be to persuade members to obey the rules without having to punish them. Only when that has clearly failed for a particular user – when he has repeatedly resisted polite requests to change his behavior, and further requests seem fruitless – is there reason to impose any penalty on him.